


Boomtown

by GrwwOuttakes



Category: City of Heroes
Genre: Alien Invasion, Boomtown - Freeform, Digital Art, Disasters, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Post-War, Wrecked Cityscape, cityscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28460595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrwwOuttakes/pseuds/GrwwOuttakes
Summary: A place in City of Heroes that was destroyed in a devastating attack - it used to be known as Baumton, but after the Rikti invasion and the bombing, it began to be known by a different name. Boomtown.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	Boomtown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [multifoliate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/multifoliate/gifts).



### Boomtown

They couldn't quite remember their dreams, but they thought they were peaceful. A sleeping city spirit, Baumton-that-was, dreaming a farmer's market amid neat rows of tall buildings, busy people going about their busy-people-business by day, relaxing and drinking and enjoying themselves by night. Pigeons roosting on their cliff-like parapets, rats hiding in their cellars, all as it should be in the quietest neighborhood of a modern metropolis. Stars in the night sky, massed along the Milky Way, glittering in the space between. Yes, they had been peaceful dreams.

And then the Rikti attacked. It began with red-lit circles forming in the skies. Through those came invaders, armored assault infantry backed up by massive bomber hovercraft. Baumton took the brunt of the first, biggest attack, before Paragon City's defenses were ready. 

But that didn't, couldn't explain why Boomtown was never repaired. Even after the walls went up, after the rest of the city could bounce back from a Rikti invasion a week later like it had never happened, Boomtown stayed a wreck. That, the spirit of Boomtown knew, was their own doing. 

The invasion had awakened them from the peaceful dreams, brought them into a horrifying reality, one in which their buildings were sliced open, their streets bombed into rubble, their people and pigeons and rats wounded and dying and in pain. Heroes crossed the sky above, searching for survivors, rescuing those they found, but no one came to the rescue of the spirit of Baumton. No one soothed their suffering with empathic powers or even kind words. No one eased their way back to peaceful sleep.

The heroes of Paragon had abandoned Baumton when Baumton needed them most.

The spirit of Boomtown's opinion was that those who had not saved them deserved no shelter from them. Boomtown had been betrayed by the heroes of Paragon City, and did not care to welcome them home. And so Boomtown was left to the violent and dangerous ones who might venture there, who might find a mostly-destroyed former city congenial enough despite the spirit's ire. Might find such a place made it easy to hide their works and themselves in the shadows amid the broken streets and terraces. 

Here and there, a flower might grow through the cracks the Rikti bombs had made in the pavement. Here and there, a rat might care for her nest of young, teaching them the ancient ways of scavenging in ruins. Here and there, heroes might still venture into Boomtown to fight the crime that had become endemic. 

And now and then, Boomtown would sleep, and dream of the stars.


End file.
